— And dinner?
The question was tossed into the quiet of the room as casually as Kirill tossed his jacket onto the back of the chair. He wasn’t expecting an answer; he was stating a need. The sound of his steps across the parquet was heavy, assured—the steps of a man who had returned to his own personal, predictable space after a day’s work. He walked past Yulia, who sat in an armchair with a book, and headed straight for the kitchen, where, by all the laws of his universe, the aromas of hot food ought already to be drifting.
But the kitchen greeted him with sterile, chilly silence. No steam over pots, no sizzling in a pan. The perfectly clean stovetop held nothing. The only spot of color on the empty counter was a blue-and-yellow packet of pasta, solitary and defiant. Kirill froze for a moment, his brain refusing to process what he saw. It was a system error, a glitch in the matrix of his usual world. He turned. Yulia hadn’t moved; her gaze was fixed on the lines of her book.
“I don’t get it. What is this?” he asked, pointing toward the kitchen.
“There,” Yulia said calmly, without looking up. Her voice was as even as the surface of a frozen lake.
He looked again at the packet of pasta. It began to dawn on him. This wasn’t forgetfulness. It was a revolt. Petty, kitchen-sized—but all the more insulting for it. Blood slowly rushed to his face. He’d spent eight hours on his feet at his warehouse, giving orders, solving problems, moving boxes and people. He came home to rest, to be fed and left in peace. That was his unshakable privilege, the price of his fatigue.
“Have you lost it?” He took a step toward her. The book in her hands irritated him more than the empty stove. It was a barrier, a wall she’d built against him. “I’m asking where dinner is. I’m starving.”
“Pasta’s on the counter. Water’s in the tap.” She turned a page.
That was the last straw. The calm with which she said it blew him up from the inside. In two strides he crossed the room and yanked the book from her hands, flinging it aside.
“I’m talking to you!”
Yulia slowly lifted her eyes to him. There was no fear in her gaze. Only cold, heavy exhaustion. And something else, something new he hadn’t seen before. Something hard as steel. He grabbed her by the forearm, his fingers tightening with a force that should have made her cry out. He was used to physical strength being the final and weightiest argument.
“Get up. Go cook.” He dragged her toward the kitchen, the way he’d drag a balky sack of potatoes.
She didn’t resist; her feet simply skated along the floor. He was already savoring his victory, imagining how, broken, she would now stand at the stove. But right at the kitchen doorway she suddenly pitched forward, almost falling. He loosened his grip for a second, surprised by the maneuver. In that instant her free hand shot to the stove, where a heavy cast-iron skillet from breakfast still sat. The movement was short, precise, without a windup. A dull, heavy thud of metal on bone rolled through the apartment.
Kirill lurched back, instinctively clutching his head. His vision went dark for a moment. The pain was not sharp but blunt, stunning. He stared at Yulia and couldn’t recognize her. She stood before him, the skillet lowered like a club in her hand. Her face was pale but resolute.
“You want to eat? Cook it yourself. What do you know—our big ‘man of the house’ showed up! You can boss your warehouse workers around; here you won’t so much as peep.”
He stood blinking, bewildered. He couldn’t make sense of what had happened. The woman who for years had silently borne his criticism, who had always tried to please him, had just hit him. And not just hit him—she’d told him everything. She’d drawn a line. He touched the back of his head, felt the lump swelling, and felt humiliation flood him, pushing out both anger and pain. He didn’t know what to do. Shout? Hit back? But something in her eyes said she was ready for anything, that she’d already crossed the point of no return.
He turned without a word, walked to the chair, picked up his jacket. He grabbed his car keys. He didn’t say a thing. He just left. Left for the place where his right to a hot dinner had never been in doubt. Where his mother always waited.
His parents’ apartment greeted Kirill with the smell of fried potatoes with onions and the feeling of unshakable, eternal calm. Nothing had changed for years. The same mat by the door, the same slippers his father, Gennady Petrovich, nudged toward him with his foot without taking his eyes off the TV news. And the same mother, Svetlana Igorevna, sailing out of the kitchen with cheeks reddened by steam and a gaze filled with instant, all-consuming alarm.
“Kiryusha? What happened? Why are you so pale?”
She hugged him, ran a hand through his hair, and he, a thirty-year-old warehouse manager, became for a moment a little boy again, running home with a scraped knee. He let her lead him to the kitchen, seat him in his usual chair, slide a plate of steaming potatoes and a huge pork cutlet in front of him. He ate in silence while she fussed around, topping up tea and asking questions in a soft, insinuating voice.
“Did you quarrel with Yulia? What did she do this time?”
He finished chewing, pushed the plate away and finally looked up at her. In his eyes lay all the world’s sorrow of an offended man.
“She hit me, Mom. With a frying pan. On the head. Here, feel.” He tilted his head slightly, offering the lump at his nape.
Svetlana gasped and gently touched the bruise with her fingertips. Her face hardened instantly; the softness evaporated, giving way to cold, righteous fury. Her son. Her boy. Some little hussy had dared to raise a hand to him.
“For what?” she breathed.
“I came home from work, dog-tired. Asked for dinner,” he deftly left out the part about hauling his wife to the kitchen. In his version, he was the innocent victim. “And she’s sitting there with a book. Says, ‘Cook it yourself.’ I said a word to her, and she… grabbed it and walloped me.”
That was enough. Svetlana wiped her hands on her apron; her movements turned sharp and businesslike. She pulled her phone from her pocket.
“I’m not leaving this as it is. I’ll make her dance.”
Kirill didn’t object. He leaned back in his chair, feeling a warm wave of satisfaction spread through him. Now Mom would fix everything. Now she’d call and put that upstart in her place. He listened to the ringing with anticipation.
“Yulechka, hello. It’s Svetlana Igorevna,” she began in a honeyed voice that, as Kirill knew, always set Yulia’s teeth on edge.
Silence on the other end, then a flat, emotionless: “Yes.”
“Yulenka, what’s going on over there? Kiryusha’s come to me all upset, with a bump on his head. He says you… with kitchenware. Is that true?”
“It’s true,” Yulia confirmed just as calmly.
Svetlana was taken aback for a second by such bluntness. She’d expected excuses, muddled explanations, but not cold confirmation.
“But… why? How could you? A man comes home from work, tired, hungry. His job is to provide for the family, and yours is to create comfort, to feed him. Isn’t that what I taught you?”
“You didn’t teach me anything, Svetlana Igorevna,” Yulia said, without a hint of impertinence—just a statement of fact. “And that’s between him and me.”
“Oh, ‘between you,’ is it!” The sweetness in the mother-in-law’s voice began to crack, giving way to metal. “When my son is sitting here with his head bashed in, it’s my business too! Who do you think you are? Think that because he married you, you can twist him around your finger? He’s not some errand boy!”
“I’m not a maid either,” Yulia cut in.
Kirill saw the muscles jump in his mother’s jaw. She moved to direct assault.
“Here’s how it’s going to be. Since you don’t understand the nice way and you’ve forgotten your place, we’ll come over tomorrow. I’ll see for myself what kind of order you have there. And you will cook a proper lunch. And you will apologize to him. Do you understand me?”
Another brief pause on the line. Then a quiet, distinct click. Yulia hung up. Svetlana stared for a few seconds at the dark screen; her face flushed crimson.
“She… she hung up,” she hissed, turning to her son. “All right. Fine. Tomorrow we’ll go to your place and make her life merry.”
The next day, exactly at noon, Kirill turned the key in the lock. He didn’t bother to ring. It was his home; he entered without warning. Behind him, like an armored cruiser ready for battle, stood Svetlana Igorevna. She hadn’t come to reconcile. She had come to win. Her face was stern, her chin lifted. In her handbag, alongside her wallet and lipstick, lay the whole code of unwritten laws about how a proper daughter-in-law should behave. And she was ready to read it out point by point.
They stepped into the entryway. The apartment met them with silence. Yulia sat in the very same armchair where he’d left her the day before. The same book lay on her lap. She raised her eyes to them, and there was neither surprise nor fear there. Only level, calm expectation. She knew they would come.
“Well, hello, ‘hostess,’” Svetlana said with icy politeness, slipping off her elegant coat and deliberately hanging it on the hook. She was not here as a guest. She had come to impose order.
Encouraged by his mother’s presence, Kirill walked into the room and stood behind her, arms crossed. He was no longer alone. Now he had the force of maternal righteousness behind him.
“We’re here,” he announced, as if declaring the start of a military inspection.
Svetlana didn’t waste time on empty talk. She ignored Yulia and, like an inspector, headed straight for the kitchen. Kirill followed. Yulia remained in the armchair, not even turning her head. She heard cupboard doors opening and closing, the click of heels on tile.
“Well now,” came Svetlana’s loud, indignant voice. “I don’t understand a thing. It’s like a hurricane blew through here. Yesterday’s dishes unwashed. The stove is cold. May I ask what you were doing all night and all morning?”
Yulia silently turned a page. That gesture—this deliberate indifference—worked on her mother-in-law like a red rag to a bull. She marched back out, her face blazing with outrage.
“I’m talking to you! Are you deaf? My son came home yesterday and asked for food, and what did you do? Hit him with a frying pan? And now you sit like a queen reading your little books?”
“See, Mom? I told you!” Kirill put in, feeling his own grievance flare anew under his mother’s protection. “She couldn’t care less.”
Svetlana stepped almost flush with the armchair. She looked down at Yulia, her gaze full of contempt.
“A woman who doesn’t feed her husband is no woman. She’s a lodger. You live in his apartment, you eat at his expense, and you can’t fulfill your most basic duty? Make him a bowl of soup? What are you even here for?”
Then Yulia slowly closed her book. She set it on the side table and stood. Now they were almost eye to eye, though Yulia was a bit shorter. But her composure made her taller, more substantial.
“This is my kitchen, Svetlana Igorevna,” she said quietly, but so distinctly that each word hung in the air. “And I decide in it when and for whom I cook. Yesterday Kirill didn’t want dinner. He wanted to show who’s boss in the house by using force. I showed him that the boss here is the one who scrubs this kitchen and stands at this stove.”
Svetlana’s face turned into a frozen mask of disgust. She hadn’t expected such impudence. She’d thought her arrival would break Yulia, make her cry and beg forgiveness. Instead, she heard a declaration of war.
“Oh, so that’s how we’re talking!” she hissed. “So you fancy yourself the mistress here? Fine. Mistress it is. Let’s see what kind you are. Kirill, come. We’ll teach this delicate little thing how a husband is to be received.”
She wheeled around and strode back to the kitchen as if onto a battlefield. Kirill, his face twisted with anger and confusion at once, followed. He felt the situation slipping out of control, but it was too late to retreat. They had come for a capitulation, and instead they’d received an ultimatum. Now they would have to see it through.
The kitchen, previously neutral ground for morning coffee, instantly turned into a staging ground for an offensive. Svetlana moved with the energy of a field marshal inspecting a captured city. She yanked open the refrigerator, laying bare its innards in what, to her mind, was all their meager poverty.
“Let’s see what we’ve got… Yogurt. Eggs. Some dried-out cheese. Kirill, is she feeding you grass? Where’s the meat? Where’s the broth for soup? A man needs meat!”
She slammed the door with such a bang it sounded like a verdict. Her inspector’s gaze fell on the cupboards.
“And what’s here? Grains, pasta, more pasta… Good Lord, nothing but dry goods! Do you even know what proper food is? Or in your village is that all they taught you?”
Kirill stood beside her, drawing strength from his mother’s anger. Her words were balm to his wounded pride.
“I told you, Mom. She pinches pennies on me. She’s got money for her books and rags, but not for a decent piece of meat for her husband. I break my back at the warehouse, and she loafs around here!”
The insults grew more personal, more vicious. They were no longer about cooking. They were aimed at Yulia herself—her background, her worth as a human being.
“What can you expect from her?” Svetlana went on, turning to Yulia with undisguised revulsion. “All airs and no money. We thought we were bringing a decent person into the family, someone who would be a support to our Kiryusha. And we got… a hollow shell. Sits here all day swallowing dust. No proper job, no desire to set the house in order. Useless.”
Each word was calculated to strike, to humiliate, to make her feel like nothing. They expected tears, screams, hysteria. They expected her to break, to fall to her knees and beg forgiveness. But Yulia kept silent. She simply watched them, and in her gaze there was neither hurt nor anger. Only a cold, detached appraisal, as if she were observing two unpleasant, predictable insects.
And when their stream of insults paused for a breath, when they needed air for the next attack, she did something they hadn’t expected at all. She moved. She walked past them into the kitchen without so much as a glance. They fell silent for a second, thrown off balance.
Yulia went to the refrigerator her mother-in-law had just inspected. She opened it and took out what Svetlana, in her fury, had failed to notice: a chilled, vacuum-packed chicken breast, a fresh pepper, and a bunch of herbs. She set them on the counter. Then she took a bag of rice from the cupboard.
Kirill and his mother exchanged looks. A shadow of triumph flickered over their faces. They decided they’d won. That she had caved and would now, like a beaten dog, cook them dinner. They watched in silence, ready to start lecturing again at any moment.
But Yulia did not move like a guilty wife. She moved with the slow, honed grace of someone on her own turf, fully in control. The sound of a knife, crisp and regular against the cutting board, split the taut silence. She diced the chicken into perfect cubes. Then the pepper into fine strips. She set a skillet on the stove, poured in oil. Within a minute the kitchen filled with the aroma of onions frying; then spices and chicken joined in.
She said nothing. She just cooked. And in that silent, methodical process there was more strength and contempt than in any shout. Kirill swallowed. The smell tickled his nostrils, awakening animal hunger and a vague unease.
Yulia boiled the rice, added the vegetables to the skillet, brought the dish to readiness. Then she took a plate. One. She spooned on a mound of snow-white rice, and beside it the fragrant chicken with vegetables. She garnished the dish with a sprig of parsley. It wasn’t just dinner. It was a masterpiece, prepared with the cold, detached precision of a surgeon.
She took the plate, a fork, and a knife. And, ignoring the two statues in the kitchen, walked into the living room. She sat in her armchair and set the plate on the coffee table. Right in front of them. She picked up her fork and knife.
And began to eat.
She ate slowly, savoring every bite. She didn’t look at them; her gaze stayed on the plate. But her whole being screamed in their faces. In the apartment’s full, deafening silence, the only sounds were the soft clink of her fork on porcelain and the barely audible sound of her chewing. It was the sound of her victory—final and irreversible. Kirill and Svetlana stood and watched as she ate their would-be dinner of reconciliation, their dinner of capitulation. And in that moment they both realized that they had lost. Not just the argument. Everything…
